Today at around 9 AM my opinion of the Apple iPad changed. In one of my previous blogs, thoughts on the apple iPad, I commented that I wouldn’t buy the iPad if I weren’t a developer, and if I hadn’t I would be seriously disappointed that I hadn’t.

The first thing that I noticed was that the iPad feels really sturdy. It feels as strong as s piece of solid aluminum. The on screen keyboard is pretty good, in fact, I’m using it right now to create this post. But using the Apple Bluetooth keyboard with it makes it clear that this thing has the ability to replace my laptop for most of the reasons I carry one. My own app looks great, although not without it’s minor bugs. A friend found a way to get into an endless loop with the code completion dialog. It took me a while to figure out a work around, it turned out to be changing the orientation.

Browsing the web is just …. Natural … There is a quality to using the web on this that is difficult to describe, but it is like nothing else. I would recommend that if you can wait, the 3G version would be better if you don’t mind AT&T, and you don’t mind paying them extra. If you do not have an iPhone, it may make sense to pay the extra. If you do have an iPhone already, then it just doesn’t make a ton of sense to me. I will probably get a MiFi somewhere and just sign up for a contract.

I would recommend getting a case as well. While I am not afraid that it will break, it is bigger than it feels in your hands and as such is a pretty likely candidate for some unintended bumping. The battery life is stellar. I don’t even think about it, and at the end of the day I still have 47% power.

The app situation is pretty unclear. I added a bunch of apps to my iPad hoping that more of them would have been optimized for the iPad. But it seems that most developers opted to create completely separate applications for the iPad. I was going to do that as well, but I didn’t want the headache of having to maintain two separate applications with the same functionality. The doubled applications range in usability. I found that most of the applications were very usable in their iPhone form.

In summary, my opinion has been changed. The iPad is a game changer. Mides on it is excellent, especially with the bluetooth keyboard. The iWork suite is fantastic. I love this form factor, it feels like you are playing with the future. It is also awesome to be able to stream episodes of Top Gear on my iPad with the Netflix app. I am glad that I got the 16 GB version, I really find that I don’t need more storage since I always have my iPhone with me, I haven’t found that I run out of space, especially with the convert to 128kbps AAC option in iTunes 9.1. Since this is a first impression, I’ll check back in after my experiment to see if I can live with the iPad instead of a laptop for a couple of weeks.